


waiting for the tides to meet

by partingxshot



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics)
Genre: Damian Wayne is Robin, Dick Grayson is Batman, Drowning, Gen, Hurt Damian Wayne, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, damian juuuuust beginning to understand the strange phenomenon of being loved, look it's early damian ok it's part of the package
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 02:29:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29992533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/partingxshot/pseuds/partingxshot
Summary: Grayson behaves like this sometimes: like Damian needs to be protected. It twists his stomach in sharp and unfamiliar ways.“You leave, then!" Damian spits. "I’ll—I’ll track Clayface on my own.”Another shudder takes him. The pain floods him all over again. It doesn’t matter: he won’t cry out. The rain pelts the dumpster behind him. It pools in cracks in the concrete.(Dick and Dami Week 2021, for the prompt "You're not my father!"/"I am well aware.")
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne
Comments: 4
Kudos: 84





	waiting for the tides to meet

**Author's Note:**

> I speed-wrote this to try to get it up in time; might edit more tomorrow. I forgot about Dick & Dami week and was feeling left out, so I decided to write one of the prompts!
> 
> Obviously I'm going to set everything in early Dickbats era!!! It's me!!
> 
> Title is from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbqeBIY8tPc).

Stinging saltwater passes over his eyes.

Light from the surface filters through his lashes, then fades. The press of the harbor pulls him down and down, into a world of silt and shade between the steel legs of industrial docks. Pain flares down his ribcage—lesser now, in the cold. His body is too numb to feel it.

 _Survive,_ his mother had told him. Mother knows best.

Damian calls on the snarling creature in his chest: the him-that-is-strong. The him-that-survives. He pushes toward the surface, every part of him straining for the sun. He pummels the water; lets it choke the pain out of him.

Mother will be waiting there, at the harbor in Stockholm. She will watch him pull his bone-tired body onto the rocks and shiver.

 _Again,_ she will say.

“Robin,” Grayson says—at the bottom of his register, in the voice of the Bat. “We’re going to the car.”

“Coward,” Damian spits. “We’re not retreating.”

He leans against an alley wall damp with rain and something rotten. He suppresses the shiver that tries to take him: starting where the rain drenches his shoulders and ending at his injured ankle—the part of his body that’s become a burden. He keeps it from touching the ground.

Water drips from Batman’s cowl and slides down his cape. Droplets ball up against the symbol on his chest. He says, “You’re injured. We’re done.”

Damian bares his teeth. “We’re _never_ done. You’d know that if you were _him._ ”

Grayson steps forward. Damian ducks his chin, defensive, and Grayson’s shoulders go suddenly slack. He stills.

“We’re going home,” he repeats, words taut with a strange urgency. “We’ve done what we need to. I’m turning tonight over to Batgirl.”

Grayson behaves like this sometimes: like Damian needs to be protected. It twists his stomach in sharp and unfamiliar ways.

 _“You_ leave, then! I’ll—I’ll track Clayface on my own.” Another shudder takes him. His hovering ankle knocks against his good shin and the pain floods him all over again. It doesn’t matter: he won’t cry out.

The rain pelts the dumpster behind him. It pools in cracks in the concrete.

“You’ve been through enough,” Grayson says. His eyes are wide and worried behind the cowl.

The creature in Damian’s chest, the him-that-survives, howls at the insult—buries the flutter of fear beneath its own weight. _He can’t protect you. If you can’t survive on your own—_

He lets his face go slack and empty. He looks Grayson straight in the eye and slams his injured foot to the ground.

Grayson flinches violently. “Don’t,” he says, his hands raised to pacify. “Please don’t.”

“Your weakness is disgusting,” Damian says. “You’ll never be Batman.”

“You don’t need to _do_ this—”

“You’re not my father!”

Grayson’s breath catches. He swallows, the lump in his throat thrown into sharp relief by shadow.

Calmly—too calmly—he says: “I am well aware. But Robin? I don’t have to be him. And you don’t, either.”

Damian’s chest contracts like a physical injury—like the one the League had given him to test his survival drive in cold water. _Survive,_ his mother had said, and—

He fires his grappling gun. Pulls himself off his feet and swings further into Gotham’s underbelly, Grayson’s startled voice fading behind him. Clayface is out there. They can’t waste any more time.

Years later—when Gotham has crashed through his walls and taught him regret—Damian will nearly drown. The him-that-survives will save him. 

He’ll be undoing the Year of Blood, seeking atonement over glory. He’ll confront Nobody’s suppliers and they will try to kill him under the water of Gotham Harbor. He’ll look to the water’s surface, light filtering through his lashes, and he will imagine his father’s face there.

This hallucination will not save him. This vision of his father will not dive in after him. It will not submerge.

Nobody will save Damian except himself.

(His mother will stand on the rocks in Stockholm, and she will say: _Again.)_

If he travels by grappling gun, he can make it. He’ll swing from building to crumbling building until he has Clayface in his sights. Oracle’s last tip put the bastard near Gotham Harbor.

Rain pelts his face, a solid wall. The momentum of each swing drags at his ankle like quicksand.

A shadow appears alongside his, long and agile. 

Through gritted teeth Damian says, “I told you to leave.”

“There’s nothing good on TV this time of night anyway.” Grayson’s cape moves in strange patterns behind him, battered by the downpour. He keeps pace with Damian effortlessly, and Damian wants to scream.

“Make up your mind. First you decide I’m useless, then you follow me into combat?”

“Useless? You think—Robin, _no._ I just want you to be safe.” 

He scowls. “I’m not going back. Maybe I shouldn’t go back at all, if this is how little you respect me.”

He feels the weight of Grayson’s gaze like a physical thing—like rain bearing down. 

Then Grayson lets out a rush of air through his teeth. He hums. “Less thunder than I was expecting. Maybe it’ll let up soon.”

Damian blinks. “Didn’t you hear me? I said I’ll leave for good.”

“But not right now,” Grayson says calmly. “Right now, you’re finding Clayface. Right?”

Damian steals another glance. Grayson’s presence is solid and serene—an acrobatic figure cutting shadows through the night. Costume aside, he doesn’t look much like Father. It’s a wonder anyone mistakes them.

“You can’t stop me,” Damian says slowly—unsure what the trap might be.

“Guess not,” Grayson says. “So I’ll go with you.”

Damian’s stomach twists strangely again. He fights the urge to search Grayson’s face for honesty. “But—you’re angry with me.”

“So what? You want me to send you to your room? Take away your Xbox?” He flashes Damian a sly smile—like they’re both in on the joke. “Who am I, your dad?"

After the year of atonement, he will sometimes dream of drowning. The waters of Gotham Harbor will grow colder and colder until he knows suddenly that he is in Stockholm, his mother waiting on the shore above.

He never dreamed about Stockholm before he left his mother. Maybe the him-that-survives knew that the League left no room for nightmares—that waking in weakness would hurt him badly in the end.

After the year of atonement—years after tonight—there will be nightmares. Sometimes he will press a palm to his mouth and quiet his breath in silence.

But sometimes, he will hear a knock on the door, and a sliver of soft light from the hallway will brush the blankets. He will invite Richard in.

He succeeds in losing Grayson. Then he runs out of buildings to grapple from. 

The harbor is across a stretch of paved parking lot, wide and empty. Beyond that, a chain link fence separates him from the water. It rattles in the rain.

He steels himself. He drops to the edge of the parking lot and walks.

The pain is nothing he hasn’t handled before. The ankle is likely broken, and it won’t become _unbroken_ if he babies it. Clayface is somewhere nearby.

He marches stiff-backed against the wind. Grayson’s shadow reappears under the streetlights, moving alongside his. The cowl—the cape. Like a minimalist drawing of Father.

“Took you long enough,” Damian scowls.

He takes another searing step. Then another. Soon...soon, the fence. Then the warehouses beyond, and a fight for his life, and—

Weariness hits him fiercely enough to make him dizzy. A shiver runs through him, violent. The night feels so _long._

He swallows. “I know you want me to stop.”

The silence, uncharacteristic for Grayson, extends until pain’s throbbing through Damian’s head in tune with his ankle. 

Something bubbles up in his chest when he thinks of Grayson’s sly smile. Suddenly, urgently, he wants to see it.

He turns. “I _can’t_ stop. Don’t you understand? If I stop, then I’m—then I’ll…”

Batman watches him grimly, his mouth a thin line. His hard jaw has a cleft in the middle, and the tendons of his neck stand out in sharp relief.

Without thinking, Damian nearly says: _Father?_

Then his brain catches up with his mouth. He spins on his bad heel and nearly goes down—limps as fast as he can for the fence, a pained noise on every exhale. 

The parking lot isn’t defensible. This wasn’t where it was supposed to happen.

A shadow overtakes him; he rolls. Clayface’s wide arm crushes the spot he’d been standing in. 

The bastard must’ve based his deception on Father’s features. He hasn’t been close enough to Grayson yet to notice the differences.

Where _is_ Grayson?

Damian leaps for the chain link fence; pulls himself up as fast as he can. He cuts his cheek on steel wire. The metal is soaking. He can barely see through the downpour.

Clayface growls behind him: “Quit wasting my time.”

A sucking sound precedes his next strike; Damian leapfrogs upward. The fence shakes hard enough that he nearly loses his grip—nearly falls into Clayface’s expanding arm where it slurps up the chain link.

He swings one leg over the fence, then the other—he slips on the wet metal. Falls.

The pavement of the harbor rises up to meet his shoulder. He hears something crack. No time—he tosses a smoke batarang behind him and scrambles to his feet. 

He falls again, his ankle collapsing beneath him. 

Grayson isn’t here to save him. Damian has always, always saved himself.

The him-that-survives _howls._

He half-crawls, half-runs for the water. Behind him he hears Clayface land, heavily, on this side of the fence. He pursues through a rain that quickly dissipates the batarang fog.

Where is Grayson? Is he bleeding out in an alleyway somewhere, ambushed by someone who looked like his Robin? If Damian hadn’t tried to lose him—

The water’s edge comes up suddenly in front of him. He leaps from the base of the pier—

Clayface’s massive hand swats him off-course like a man swats a fly. His head slams against a railing, then the water takes him.

Stinging saltwater passes over his eyes.

Light from the surface filters through his lashes, then fades. The press of the harbor pulls him down and down, into a world of silt and shade between the steel legs of industrial docks.

 _Survive,_ his mother had told him. _No one else will save you._

This time, he is drowning.

He kicks weakly and randomly. He feels a pain in his chest like he’s never felt before: air going bad inside of him. 

Even the him-that-survives curls up beneath his ribcage and goes numb in the cold. 

Darkness eats at the edge of his vision. He sees Father’s face. 

Is it Clayface? His own dying brain?

Then the hallucination crashes through the water. It dives in after him. Arms wrap underneath his, and he’s moving up, and up, and breaching—

He feels the press of human warmth against his back before anything else. Then the thrum of words whispered in his ear: “—be okay, baby, we’ll be just fine—”

He fades.

The next thing he registers is pavement, and water from his own throat spattering there. It feels—awful, hideous, raw and ragged. Tears spring from his eyes as his whole face explodes in pain. He’s on his knees.

A body fuzzes into being around him—an arm around his shoulders, a hand brushing back his hair. Grayson makes soft shushing noises and holds Damian close to his side. 

Nothing like Father. 

Damian shudders. Half from cold, half something else. The rain comes down.

“We’re going to rest,” Grayson says, voice shaking. “We’re going to rest that ankle and everything else. You don’t have to do it all on your own.”

The sound of combat barely reaches them. Brown, yes, but also Drake—facing Clayface together. Grayson doesn’t join them. He doesn’t walk away.

Soon, Damian’s breaths come in great gulps. It’s a desperation he’s felt before—the desire to _live—_ but nothing quite like this. Nothing that came after being rescued by someone else.

Being rescued. Being saved.

 _Survive,_ his mother told him, so Damian turns his face into the crook of Grayson’s neck and breathes the smell of his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> “Who am I, your dad?” ...Yes, dude! You absolutely are!


End file.
